


I don’t want to be here if I can’t be with you.

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Atheism, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Kissing, Losing faith, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Religious stuff, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 19:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: eleven kisses defining a century.(kind of 10+1 and kind of not)11. kiss





	I don’t want to be here if I can’t be with you.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Lay Me Down" by Sam Smith
> 
> also based off "Take Me To Church" by Hozier
> 
> enjoy! :)

**I’ll make up for all the years**

**I was supposed to be kissing you.**

**\- Leo Christopher**

  
  


_ Dear God, _

_ It’s Steve Rogers. Remember, the puny little guy you fucked over? _

When they’re fifteen and sixteen, Bucky comes home with stars in his eyes.

“I’ve met her, Stevie,” he whispers, breathless, and Steve grins. At the time, he has no idea what that awful twisting in his gut could be. “The love of my life. I think I’m gonna marry her.”

Steve laughs, oblivious to Bucky’s seriousness on the matter.

And he’s apparently not the only one, because two weeks later, the girl meets some soldier who’s clean and crisp and a war hero and she runs off with him, leaving Steve with a broken Bucky in his arms as they both sip whiskey straight from the bottle.

“Sorry, Buck,” Steve slurs. “Know you loved her.”

But Bucky just shrugs and sways, collapsing on top of Steve, who lets out a small ‘oof’. “She was just my disguise anyway,” the older mumbles. “Could never be as pretty as you, Stevie.”  
Steve giggles and plays with the wisps of Bucky’s hair. “Ya thinkin’ maybe we’re fairies?” He asks, and Bucky just stares.

Whispers, “I dunno,” and kisses him.

_ Yeah, probably not. I’m not worth your time, let alone his. But I’m writing you anyway, just to tell you how much I hate you. _

Everything that happens without Bucky is a blur in Steve’s mind - none of it’s worth remembering. But then he meets Peggy Carter and thinks that maybe he has someone new to make memories with.

Except she can’t compare to Bucky’s deep blue eyes that laugh at him and shine with love every time they can’t bring themselves to say the words aloud. And now that’s all gone, and Steve can feel his chest caving in, and then Peggy’s hand grips his and he bolts from the tent.

A dazed, melted collage of muted images is his memory of everything that happens after, up to the moment that he can finally breathe easy again as Bucky’s eyes focus and he sits up, dazed and unsteady. Steve wraps an arm around his waist and holds him up as he regains his balance.

“I thought you were dead,” he pants, and Bucky just cocks his head, staring as if he doesn’t know the man in front of him, and for a moment Steve’s afraid that’s true.

Then, “I thought you were smaller,” and Steve laughs wetly and then drags him out.

“Did it hurt?”

“A little.”

Lie. Bucky seems to notice and wraps himself around Steve a little tighter. But he has to let go only moments later, when he crosses the fire, and Steve shouts at Bucky to leave him behind like the self-sacrificial dumbass punk he is.

“No! Not without you!”

And when Steve leaps across the ravine, he lands harshly on the teetering metal grates of the balcony holding them up and Bucky scrambles over to him as Steve’s sitting up and regaining his bearings.

Steve can barely see straight before Bucky’s fist is suddenly colliding with his jaw, and then there are gentle, needy hands cupping his face and a warm, plush mouth over his.

“You asshole!” Bucky screams in his face, the spit getting in Steve’s eye. “Don’t do that!”

Steve stands and offers Bucky his hand, which he takes gratefully and heaves himself up off the ground. “Do what?”

“Scare me,” Bucky whispers, and tugs him in again.

_ I can’t believe you let me believe he was dead. I can’t believe, that for one awful, agonizing, never-ending moment, you let me think I had no reason to live. _

Bucky’s never kept a girl for longer than two weeks. That old flame that left him for the soldier was the longest, and even then, Bucky had never loved her, had never explained in detail the curve of her hips or the crevices of her cheeks and certainly never the plushness of her mouth, and so Steve is content to believe that Bucky is probably just like him, hiding behind closed drapes for loving people he isn’t allowed to.

And they never really said it out loud, but Steve supposed it was unspoken that he and Bucky were in love with each other and that they’d both eventually settle for being beat up in a back alleyway by an angry bunch of New Yorkers who hated them for what they couldn’t control.

But then, he became Captain America and now he still thinks he and Bucky are in love with each other but he knows that he’s drawn to Peggy in a way he can’t explain, a way that’s new and exciting and beautiful and  _ free _ , a way that he doesn’t have to bother to hide.

And for some reason, he assumes Bucky won’t be overly affected by this because he can just as easily find a dame to love and marry. But in all his daydreaming, he forgets that Bucky has never once stuck to a girl, or loved one, or left Steve behind, or denied him those wonderful kisses that happened in the darkness of whiskey-tainted memories.

Bucky’s sad, and tired, and Steve catches sight of him trying to slip through the back door unnoticed. He rushes out after him and ends up finding his best friend crouched in the shadows of the back of the bar building, eyes closed with his head resting against the brick wall, and up close Steve can see the tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Buck,” he whispers, but Bucky just shakes his head, a bittersweet smile briefly gracing his lips before it disappears behind mournful resignation, and Steve doesn’t know what else to say except, “I’m sorry.”

Bucky just laughs. But it’s not the joyous, beautiful sound Steve knows; it’s sad and hollow, the kind of laugh that he’d pretend not to hear as Bucky held him at night and kissed his neck after he believed Steve was asleep.

“I love you, punk,” is all he says, standing on unbalanced feet and staggering forward into Steve’s open arms, and he smiles drunkenly and kisses Steve’s lips once for old time’s sake.

_ And for the longest time, I let him believe that he had one too. And then I took that away, and I hope you know that you ruined him, ruined me, ruined us and everything that came after because you made me fall in love with that beautiful spitfire that I still find myself dreaming about on the Fourth of July. _

Bucky accepts Steve’s offer to join the Howling Commandos without another thought, mostly because it’s not an offer to him - he’ll follow Steve into the jaws of death, as said, regardless of the repercussions for him. He’s going to die for Steve one day, and he knows it.

But still, he gets scared. And he’s not brave like Steve. So the idea of ziplining onto a moving train in the middle of a snowstorm isn’t exactly his idea of a relaxing Sunday. But Steve wants him to, needs him to so Bucky agrees.

Nonetheless, he can’t sleep the night before. He tosses and turns for awhile before finally giving up and wandering outside.

Steve finds him smoking on a cigarette a few minutes later.

“Heard you get up,” the blonde says, voice soft with an underlying tone of worry. “You alright?”

Bucky smiles wryly.

“Yeah, punk,” he rasps. “I’m fine.”

Steve doesn’t call him out on the lie, simply steps closer and closer until their smoky breaths are mixing, lips ghosting over each other’s and whispers, “We will be. Promise.”  
Then he closes the distance between them and Bucky’s mind goes blank as their mouths meet.

_ He used to ask me if we would die tomorrow. I would laugh it off, but then he died and I realized I didn’t care if I did. _

It’s been seventy-two years.

Seventy-two  _ years _ .

_ Seventy-two fucking years. _

And now that he’s finally seeing Bucky again, his blood is making his skin sparse and the air smells like anger and washed-out memories and he can’t breathe and Steve can feel himself breaking, breaking, breaking into Bucky’s hands just like he always did back then, always has.

“You’re my mission!” Bucky screams, and god, Steve remembers when the words were “You’re my everything!” rather than _that_ and _that_ _hurts_ and Steve can’t breathe, he really _can’t_ _breathe_.

“Then finish it,” he decides. “Cause I’m with you til the end a the line.”

And then he grabs Bucky’s collar as the older man hesitates and pulls him down into a kiss, “ _ Stevie _ .”

_ And I have never understood why these things always happen to us, why we never get a straight answer out of you, because I’ve always wondered why you’d make me live just to die over and over again every time he leaves me. _

Bucharest is arguably the hardest.

Because Bucky won’t look at him. Doesn’t want to risk it. Doesn’t want Steve to see anything in his eyes, any pain, any misery. Any guilt.

Steve whispers his name. “Bucky.”

Bucky closes his eyes.

Steve steps closer.

Bucky’s hand is shaking.

Steve steps closer.

Bucky curls his fingers into a fist.

Steve closes the distance between them, wrapping Bucky safe and sound in his arms, and the softness of Bucky’s mellow heartbeat pressed against his is in deep contrast with the creaking of the floorboards beneath the weight of heavy shoes.

“It always ends in a fight, Stevie,” Bucky rasps, like he’s haunted. “Why’s it always gotta end in a fight?”

Steve whispers, “Dunno,” and for good luck, pushes his mouth onto Bucky’s as the door caves in and the windows shatter.

_ Fuck you, I thought, and had one minute to whisper, “God, I love you,” before you took him from me. _

_ Just tell me one thing - why him? _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Steve Rogers _

**soulmates aren’t the ones**

**who make you the happiest, no.**

**they’re instead the ones**

**who make you feel the most.**

**burning edges and scars and stars.**

**old pangs, captivation and beauty.**

**strain and shadows and worry and yearning.**

**sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender.**

**they hurl you into the abyss.**

**they taste like hope.**

**\- somebody**

_ Dear God, _

_ I’d like it to be noted that I never believed in you anyway and all those fucking things you tricked Stevie into believing I believe were your own sins, and I think it serves you right for judging those you have no reasonable control over. But, if you control us like you say you do, then really, all our sins are yours, aren’t they? _

The entire world has always told him that he cannot save Bucky Barnes, which honestly just makes him all the more determined to do so. But it’s hard, nearly impossible, even, to save somebody who doesn’t believe they deserve to be saved.

And sometimes, when Steve’s awake too late into the night and starts thinking too often too fast about angry, bad things, he wonders if Bucky doesn’t want to be saved.

But then he sees Bucky sleeping peacefully beside him and knows that’s not true. Because even if Bucky doesn’t want to live, and Steve has caught him with a gun to his head plenty of times, both back then and nowadays, Bucky believes his purpose in life is to protect Steve, just like Steve believes his is to protect Bucky.

But still, on the plane, when he says he’s not worth all this, Steve can hear it in his sigh -  _ I give up, I give up, let me go, Stevie  _ \- like a mantra, like an oath, like a vow.

“That wasn’t you,” he tries in vain, and he thinks his voice may have wavered even as his belief is solid, but Bucky just sighs tiredly again and kisses Steve’s knuckles, rumbles with grave resignation, “Look, Steve. I am not something you can save me from.”

Steve doesn’t want to acknowledge his failures though, even his inevitable ones, and so he just wrenches his hand out of Bucky’s, takes his face in his hands, squeezes his eyes shut and, as if that’ll cure all of it, crushes their lips together.

_ But love is no sin. And maybe, if it was, maybe we didn’t wanna be cured. I certainly didn’t. And I think the closest Stevie ever got was that military dame, Peggy, and even she, even she was a far cry from what we had. Have. _

“Don’t do this. Please.”

Steve never thought they’d really ever be leaving each other willingly, but here they are, and Steve doesn’t know how to let go now that he has Bucky in his arms.

“Stevie,” Bucky mumbles, then lets out a soft little snore, and Steve buries his face in Bucky’s hair, blinking back tears. How many more nights will he get like this? Five? One? None, a million? Sleeping with Bucky pressed against his side, both of them completely at peace, at ease, in a way they’ve never been?

“Please,” he whispers, and Bucky sniffles, the blankets rustling as he curls into a ball and pushes closer to Steve. “Please don’t do this. Don’t leave me. Don’t take yourself away.”

Bucky just fists Steve’s shirt in his fingers and breathes, and, hoping it’ll change the verdict, Steve ducks his head to peck Bucky’s parted lips.

_ I’ve always respected Stevie’s belief in you, but I have no faith. You haven’t given me one reason to, but I won’t corrupt his use of you as comfort. He’ll have to come to that conclusion on his own if he does at all - but I hate you. _

Steve’s only comfort, for the past two years, has been knowing that Bucky is alive and safe, rather than having absolutely no idea where or how he is.

At the very least, he’s always known  _ who _ Bucky is. But still. He’s missed him. The old him, the new him, the in-between and the quiet moments in which he gets to know him, remember him. Just be with him, even.

But now, it’s over. It’s all over, and he finally has Bucky back in his arms again. And Thanos may be destroying the world, and people may be watching, but he’s sure they already know.

“I missed you,” he whispers, and when Bucky smiles, Steve leans down and pushes their mouths together in a soft, gentle kiss.

_ I love him. I love him like the air I breathe and the whiskey I drink. And I hate you. I hate you like all the people who scream, “Faggot!” at him in the streets and the priests who insist they’ll save us. _

This time, Steve really does give up. I mean, sure, he fights, because he’s been made to save the world, and so he does. But in the end, in the ruins of the battlefield, there’s nobody left for him. There’s nothing.

And then comes the shouting. The crying. The hugs and the kisses and the whispers, all relieved and happy and in the midst of the past before their tragedies, there they are.

And Steve doesn’t kiss Bucky now, though he holds him in his arms like it’s the real last time he’ll ever get to, because he has no real faith that he’ll ever get to keep him. And he knows they still have to fight, they still have places to be and things to do, but when Thanos finally falls, Steve is able to take Bucky home.

There’re two bedrooms, but they only use one, and all they do is sleep, but it speaks volumes, and Bucky whispers into the dark all the things he wishes Steve knew.

The first time they ever do get there, the making-love thing, it’s slow and gentle and perfect, but first, Steve has to work through the steel walls built of Bucky’s demons, and these, these he can’t just crash through.

“Stevie,” Bucky rasps, as Steve nips his neck, and Steve pulls back to caress Bucky’s face and look him in the eye.

“Yeah, darling?”

Bucky blushes down to his toes, metal hand tightening in Steve’s. “You won’t like what you see. I’m only good for evil eyes, that’s what Brock said when he… when he…”

Steve feels the anger burn through him, dark and hot, but he keeps his expression open and gentle. “Bucky.”

But the name only coaxes the tears forward and Bucky looks away. “You won’t want me.”

Steve shushes him and presses his lips to Bucky’s temple. “I’ll always want you, baby. For better or worse.”

And with that, Bucky allows Steve to slowly peel away his shirt, and Steve touches his mouth to every inch of skin, every freckle, every scar, every brand, whispering comforts all the way through, and finally, when they’re finished and Bucky’s face is streaked with tears and they’re both blissed-out and happy and sobbing with soft pants, Steve takes Bucky’s face in his hands and presses their foreheads together.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, “so beautiful,” and because Bucky’s worth everything, kisses him.

_ Yeah, well, I’ll admit I kind of lied. I used to believe in you. A long, long time ago, when things were different. When I knew how to smile. _

It’s one of those sunny days that has a muggy sadness in the air when they go.

The apartment hasn’t changed much. The whole street is full of crappy, old buildings just like theirs, and the key’s still under the brick where they put it over seventy-seven years ago, and the ground creaks under their weight.

“I missed this place,” Bucky whispers, touching the door frame lovingly as they step inside. Everything has a thick coating of dust and spiderwebs, but it still smells like whiskey and sex, like home.

Steve doesn’t answer, instead opting to push open their old bedroom door with a creak, and he gasps at the sight inside.

The walls are still covered in Steve’s drawings of Bucky and him and his mother, some having fallen to the floor, all yellowed with age and slightly faded. Steve feels his eyes start to wet.

Then there’s Bucky, his hand in Steve’s, his presence strong and unrelenting beside the captain. Steve looks over at Bucky and slowly, deliberately, places his free hand on the older man’s hip, lifting their clasped fingers. Bucky rests his arm on top of Steve’s and his head on Steve’s chest as they sway and spin lazily.

And neither knows that they’ve been building up to this moment for years, have just been waiting for some sign so they can finally hand themselves over to each other completely.

“Remember when I taught you to dance?” Bucky whispers, and Steve chuckles.

“Yeah. It was that night I first told you I loved you.”

He has no qualms about saying it, doesn’t now and didn’t then, and Bucky lifts his head and looks up at him.

“Do you still…?”

Steve smiles softly. “Yes, Bucky. I love you.”

It’s Bucky who moves forward this time, murmurs the same words back, and closes the distance between them.

Steve’s lips are his new and only heaven, and he knows this because when they meet, he feels in his heart that he’s finally come home.

_ But now I believe in him. Because he’s the one who saved me. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Bucky Barnes _

  
  


**true love**

**is finding your soulmate**

**in your best friend.**

**\- somebody**

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed! :) have a great day lovelies <3


End file.
